Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

a thing I have noticed: a lot of criticism of people not wearing masks -- to be clear, you should wear masks -- seems to be people projecting their pre-existing thoughts about groups of people they don't like onto the situation, and claiming they are the main people who aren't doing it. if there's been any kind of actual research on this I'd defer to that, but in my experience there really isn't any pattern as to who does and doesn't wear masks; photos kind of bear it out, but are as self-selected as people commenting on it.

hope someone asks him "who even are you?"

Neanderthal, how was your party outdoors?

xpost my comments upthread aren't meant to denigrate youth, because unlike other demographics, age is one of the easiest ones to surmise with an eye test. nor do I think it necessarily *helps* to cast blame by demographic, because it ignores other factors such as the political leanings of the area you're in, as well as widespread availability of commercially made masks in the area (cos we know DIY is something many people won't do)...etc.

but I definitely can't ignore the percentage of young people I've seen unmasked. since I'm in a college town, I see more 20-30 somethings in grocery stores than I did when I lived further away from the college, but on my last visit, I saw exactly 1 young person with a mask, and about 10-15 without.

but the young will get the brunt of the blame because age is one of the easiest things to surmise with a mere eye test, it doesn't mean "lol the youth are killing us all". I also see plenty of people my own age and older not wearing masks, too, albeit it's a little more balanced. But it's more than just a few people in my own demographic that aren't wearing them. and I see entire families coming in maskless.

but we're a conservative state, and although my city is more liberal, when you have a state that has elected morons like Trump, Desantis and Rick Scott, their ignorance reaches people in all counties/cities and probably leads to some of the masklessness.

xpost it was nice! it was a little weird. I realized when I go a long time without socializing in public, it takes me a while to get used to it again, so I was quieter than usual. felt sad to not be able to hug anybody, but was glad nobody was doing it all the same. we were all 6 feet apart on lawn chairs and wearing masks, and having fun bullshit convo like we haven't missed a step. we were only there about two hours. I

found myself getting sad quickly as we were on the lawn where the Orlando Fringe festival usually is full of food tents, beer tents, and thousands of people, and it was just the ten of us. my first May without that in my life. but we all felt it, and it was good to be around friends again.

seeing my friends' little ones (4 1/2 year old boy, and a 2 year old girl) lit my heart up, I had missed them so much. daddy asked the boy if he remembered who I was and he said "of course I know who that guy is, that's Wob!". it was adorable.

we plan to do this semi-regularly now.

Good for you. Did you remove masks to drink?

I've taken more dares. I visited my parents at my sister's yesterday, inside the house for the first time since March. We still sat six feet apart, not that it mattered at this point.

yeah, here and there, but nobody was really drinking for the most part, since we were out on a public lawn, and nobody wanted to get fined by the cops.

this is making me extra paranoid around the house with dad. I was already wearing a mask and washing my hands like a madman, now I seem to sanitize just about fucking everything, including the air when I fart

xp -- I wasn't referring to you, this is just something that's been bugging me for a few weeks now

Staten Islanders with masks drive out non-mask wearing person in grocery store. #Coronavirus pic.twitter.com/iPQwk7lD9y

— McAuley (@McauleyHolmes) May 25, 2020

Venting fears here, not sure if they're irrational ones.

With the virus still very much in circulation and restrictions loosening, I imagine there'll be a rapid outburst of pent-up energies toward shopping & recreation, coupled with poor cautionary measures due to the psychic relief of acting 'normal' again, causing an unmistakable surge in new cases starting in about 3 or 4 weeks.

My irrational fear is that, if I don't jump onto that bandwagon at once, before the world is bursting with dangerous asymptomatic viral vectors, and before it all shuts down again, I'll have missed that tiny window of greatest safety in the first several days of manic activity. I'm sure I will resist it, but the urge is like a brain itch.

I guess it depends what you want to do. If you are talking about setting foot outdoors for the first time in a couple months, go for it. If you mean going to a crowded bar with hundreds of strangers, maybe not. There will be opportunities to do normal activities around other people again, it is just going to take time.

The way I see it right now, the bulk of people are remaining cautious and attempting to live their lives as normally as possible while taking necessary safety measures. Then there's the thrill seekers who dngaf, and will go mingle with Tina of other lunatics with little regard to anyone's safety. My hope is these two groups can stay distinct enough to keep things on the right track.

Mingle with Tina = mingle with tons of

Lol ”go mingle with Tina” would make an excellent euphemism for something, euphemizer’s choice

True enough, sounds like a good time, tbh

Got a test of myself yesterday as to where my own head is at as restrictions loosen. I went out for a bike ride with the intention of stopping at the dollar store. I realized halfway there I didn't have my scarf with me; I never even considered going through with the store visit, just continued riding around and went back later when I had it.

Having said that, I just looked at the clip of the people chasing/shaming that non mask-wearing woman out of the grocery store (outbreak! thread), and I don't want that. I find any kind of mob activity, even if well intentioned, scary.

I don't think "well-intentioned" is quite the right descriptor there. NYC metro area has suffered enough death and misery from this pandemic that it makes sense that red hot anger would boil up against someone who pays no attention to how their actions might affect others.

I think that makes-sense (yes) and being someone who would join in are not necessarily the same thing.

But that's a description of everyone in that video - turning masks into a shibboleth when you're none of you standing that far from each other and (and some of you have a bandana for a mask) is unhealthy in more than one way.

That's true too, and I hadn't even considered that--a mask is one part of an array of things one should do, and those people weren't doing another key thing. I wear a scarf in the grocery store, pulled around my mouth and nose. Should I be subject to something similar, or am I on the safe side of whatever line those people have drawn? I understand their anger, I really do, and according to the lines I've drawn myself, I've felt the same anger. I felt it today when a guy decided to exit Tim Hortons by walking by me instead of out the door he was supposed to. But feeling angry and shouting someone down in a mob isn't, again, the same thing.

Just realised there’s going to be culture wars about trick or treat in October. That should be fun.

Ima get lasers that incinerate non-mask wearers on my porch

My costume will be a non-mask wearing choad.

a thing I have noticed: a lot of criticism of people not wearing masks -- to be clear, you should wear masks -- seems to be people projecting their pre-existing thoughts about groups of people they don't like onto the situation, and claiming they are the main people who aren't doing it. if there's been any kind of actual research on this I'd defer to that, but in my experience there really isn't any pattern as to who does and doesn't wear masks; photos kind of bear it out, but are as self-selected as people commenting on it.

I agree with this katherine, I also haven't been able to detect any real demographic pattern to whether people wear masks or not. I mean, apart from Asian people adopting them way earlier and in very large numbers - assuming these are mostly people with ties to South East Asian countries that got the memo when the bird flu hit.

yeah around my way there's no pattern. old, young, kids, black, white, posh, not - mask consciousness seems sprinkled throughout. i'd say it's only about 30% of people out and about - and it's the same inside shops frankly. sainsbo's, waitrose, very few masks. even the staff don't wear masks. i find it extraordinary.

The diminishing number of people I see with masks are mostly wearing flimsy surgical masks rather than respirators, some not even covering their noses. I have started getting funny looks for wearing my n95 after a month of passing as normal.

I saw a food delivery guy at someone's door with one of them flimsy masks around his neck last night!

yeah around my way there's no pattern. old, young, kids, black, white, posh, not - mask consciousness seems sprinkled throughout. i'd say it's only about 30% of people out and about - and it's the same inside shops frankly. sainsbo's, waitrose, very few masks. even the staff don't wear masks. i find it extraordinary.

They're using their instinct obviously.

Supermarket staff in my area are in masks and gloves, and behind till screens but both the stores and clientele are on the upmarket side. Hmmmmmm.

At the coöp only the security guard is wearing mask & gloves, none of the staff are bothering at all and they don’t seem to be much into distancing either. Also near the start I saw a couple of pigs standing by the costa machine blithely chatting away maskless for ages, blocking the aisle - setting a fine example as they were no doubt about to go back out to cruise around looking for someone sitting alone on a bench so they could get up in their face

Supermarket staff in my area are in masks and gloves, and behind till screens but both the stores and clientele are on the upmarket side. Hmmmmmm.

I think you hit the nail on the head there. Where I am? Forget it.

I’ve long been fascinated by how branches of supermarkets pitch their signage etc dependant on the neighbourhood - in my neighbourhood you’ll get ‘our apologies for this inconvenience’ whereas a Sainsbury’s branch in a less affluent area will have ‘we are sorry’ plus shoplifter tags on anything worth more than £5.

work zoom calls. someone has a fan on in the same room and every time he speaks it turns his voice into some kind of robotic approximation. (although at least today it's not loud enough to trigger him as 'speaking' even when he isn't).

it's been 2 months now, people are still bad at video calls.

The diminishing number of people I see with masks are mostly wearing flimsy surgical masks rather than respirators, some not even covering their noses. I have started getting funny looks for wearing my n95 after a month of passing as normal.

This seems a weird nit to pick. People aren't even able to get N95s or respirators around here.

Thinking of getting the clippers out and shaving the head. The experiment to grow my hair has been interesting and informative - it's certainly made me consider the possibility of having my hair longer in regular times, though I hate the idea of having to go to a barbers to keep it the right length. One of the things I discovered is that I've got more hair on the top of my head than I thought I had but, and it's a big but, not enough to look any good. Having less hair on top would probably be better as, at the current stage of its growth, it just sticks straight up like sparsely planted bamboo shoots.

This is a semi-rural area and there are plenty of Trump bumper stickers, but everyone is wearing masks, even middle-aged deer hunter-ish white men shopping for tools at Harbor Freight, which is p much the same demographic that you could reasonably expect to find at a "Re-open America, now with 30% MORE GUNS" party. So I guess I'm glad people don't want to die that badly?

I live in a lower middle class (at best) city and even at the dollar store the cashiers are behind a plastic barrier wearing masks and gloves, and there are Xs of tape on the floor indicating where people should stand while waiting in line.

This seems a weird nit to pick. People aren't even able to get N95s or respirators around here.

I live a block from two hospitals, so I use food service gloves and a non-medical mask if I’m going indoors to a shop or on public transport. I use the gloves outside my flat every time I go out.

went to Lidl today, they're still making us queue outside and keep distance at the tills but it's a free-for-all in the aisles as ever. I've been going to the supermarket every three weeks (I don't want to take an online slot out of the hands of someone who actually needs it) and it's been the most stressful part of this whole thing, because people can't follow one-way arrows and wait thirty seconds til you move up the aisle. The staff have on gloves and masks and the tills have screens so I'm feeling relief that they're protected at least, I just hope the people lingering behind me weren't infected.

I only intended to pick up a few bits of fresh fruit and veg - the off-license across the road has a lot of the basics so I just go there every two or three days for milk, bread etc. I ended up getting a little bit too much to walk back home with comfortably so I decided to get a bus. I see the busses from my bedroom window trundling along half-empty every ten mins, I didn't think it would be bad at all. I got on and was astounded - people were sitting in the aisle seats rather than spacing themselves out by going closer to the window, and one guy got on and proceeded to just stand by the driver window instead of taking a seat, meaning everybody had to stand beside him as they tried to ring the bell and get off. When I go back to work I'm going to need to ride a bus for an hour every day and I am dreading it as much as actually being back at work.

We were explicitly told not to seek out N-95s or surgical masks to avoid cutting into hospital supply so that is likely why people aren't wearing them

we ordered a few hundred from Korea to donate to the NHS, but when they arrived the local NHS trust said they didn't recognise the brand so they couldn't accept them. Have sent half of them to friends and relatives now, but if anyone else in the uk wants a couple sent over you can send me a message to my linked email

Neanderthal otm. We actually have one N95 mask that my wife happened to buy last fall for spray painting some Halloween decorations, which she wears when she has to go to the grocery store. Otherwise we wear fabric masks my mom made for us when we are outside.

the ones I've been using are a bit lower spec, got them for avoiding breathing in dust when I was boring holes in MDF last year

Went to Target this morning and because I'm a diabetic I got to go in during the first hour, which is reserved for the old (65+) and vulnerable, and pregnant women.

oh man i am SO happy that COVID didn't hit when i was in my twenties, this would've absolutely have been me.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/01/the-bushwick-house-share-was-a-haven-then-covid-19-struck

On Friday, April 17th, Shannon turned the oven all the way up to five hundred degrees to make pizza, then retreated to her room. Javier, who was writing postcards home, saw smoke and switched the heat off; Shannon stormed out and berated him. She thought he was always hogging the kitchen. From her room, she texted the group, “Please do not shut the oven off without letting the person know trying to put something in the oven. Thx!”

“I’m sorry,” Javier wrote back. “The house was in smoke . . . won’t happen again, please don’t be slamming things and cursing me out.” Shannon responded with a blast of texts:

You can communicate that shit. This is getting out of hand.
You are taking up the entire apartment and cooking mostly every night. And this goes for everyone. I have had 2 times this week I could use the kitchen and I’ve felt attacked when I do. So we all need to come up with a communication system that works better when there are ppl at home all day and then there are ppl who are working their asses off in essential services for fucks sake
Plz do not tell me to censor myself I’m 28 and I’ll fucking express how I feel to whomever I choose. I’m getting pissed off now and that’s why I’m in the group chat because we are not getting along and this apartment is NOT WORKING FOR ME

McSherry, playing diplomat, wrote back, “You have the autonomy to behave however you like, but it’s extremely childish to slam doors and yell when you get upset. none of us gets to live exactly like we would if we lived alone; we all make compromises in consideration for one another.”

A moment later, Shannon replied:

Literally fuck u
Fuck you ALL

shannon otm

Shannon is bad and wrong

nothing's more infuriating than having people behave calmly and reasonably when you're throwing a tantrum.

nothings more infuriating that burnt oven pizza.

the second most infuriating thing is one the person having the freakout is also the person yelling at everyone to communicate better